They were trapped for seven days. Susan would have laughed if you told her should would never be trapped that long. She had grown up in Alaska and had only even been trapped indoors for four days when the snow gathered past the roof and the tunnel they had shoveled to the car collapsed.
But here they were, seven days later and still trapped. She sighed and walked around the periphery of the bedroom. When they realized they would be trapped for quite a while, they had assigned everyone with a room, to ensure privacy. Susan thought it was silly...
She'd have preferred the electric chair, at least that one bloody moved. She could get up a good speed on that one, maybe she could get out of it, escape their sympathetic looks. It was bad enough losing the power in your legs without their condescending looks. Idiots.
Apparently it was a "power chair", but, frankly, bollocks to that. Jokingt that she was living out a death sentence was one of her few pleasures left - that terror in their eyes, the "oh god how do we respond to that" was what she was living for right now.
Actually, that...
Majestic words like maelstrom, preponderance, warbling swirl through my creative whirlpool, pulling in pieces of conversation, tail-ends of admonitions, the lilt of swearing. I live by the calendar, fitting my days into the squares, x'ing the boxes at midnight.
Friday is the wave that crashed but hasn't withdrawn to the sea. I'll compose this in the spiked surf.
She could tell I was faking it. After twenty years of marriage, she could read my thoughts like a book. She spoke to me with her eyes and, although she was silent, I heard everything.
"What's wrong? Why won't you talk to me?" Her green eyes shone as she "spoke." I looked down and my eyes fell on my wedding band. How much longer would this last? I knew what I had done. I had lied to her. A marriage can't stand on lies - I know that.
She looked at me again and reached for my hand. I squeezed...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Jerome, her uncle's brother, took no notice of her. Her hands were cold and shaking. He continued eulogizing. "He was a great man, and there's no denying. We all..."
"No."
That got his attention. All of them, really. She clasped her hands together tightly, willing her voice to be steady. Jerome raised an eyebrow at her. "Did you have something you wanted to say, Candace? Why don't you come on up here and say it?"
She swallowed, hard. The idea of...
The children were not at school. It was an odd feeling. This freedom was what they had longed for, begged for every school night since forever. To be freed from school for as long as they wanted, to be allowed to play video games all day, to eat chocolate for breakfast and ice-cream for lunch and to make as much mess as they liked without ever ever being shouted at.
It had been exciting for the first two days, fun for the following three. But by now the heady freedom had dissolved into an aching boredom with a great emptiness...
The first few days she hadn't noticed the bars. She'd noticed very little about her surroundings other than that they were wrong. As her head became less fuzzy and she began to understand why they were wrong, that this wasn't where she was supposed to be she tried to learn everything there was to learn about this unfamiliar environment.
It was on the tenth day that she'd counted, that the sun shone for the first time. Whereas it had looked grey and dreary outside, the glowing sunlight made it look full of possibilities. The bars were on the inside of...